My friend and colleague Marty and I have turned in our manuscript for the book on educational planning in the congregational context. This is the sit and wait stage before the next phase of editing. For me this is always a time of gratitude for the break from writing and anticipation toward finishing the work.

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I recently heard a speaker say that “…everything and everywhere is a classroom and therefore an educational setting….” While the hyperbole makes its point, the use of the term “classroom” posits a danger for misunderstanding. My concern is that, while I agree with the sentiment, there is risk in using a classroom as a metaphor for anything other than . . . well, a classroom.

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If you have ever talked to someone about the Christian Year who isn’t familiar with it, then you may recognize the blank stare on their face that you get in return. Use the Seasons of the Spirit’s “The Seasons of the Church Year” poster, and you have a great starting point for this discussion.

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These are anxious times for theological schools and seminaries, more so than normal, anyway. The plight of several seminaries (closings, downsizing, layoffs) has recently made the rounds in the religious press and newsmagazines. And talk about viability and relevance is lively among faculties, including questions about how long the shelf life of the classic M.Div. will be. Comments like these made by alumnus in response to a survey only serves to increase the angst of some professors:

“Taking Hebrew helped shape some of my thoughts and understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures, but other than that, I haven’t found it to be very useful in my week-in, week-out work with youth.” “I have never been asked a question about my Greek knowledge level. Luckily for me, there are Greek-English interlinears.”

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Last week someone left a plastic bag on my porch. It contained two hefty telephone directories. This yearly event used to annoy me. I have no use for phone books. If I want to find a person, company, or address I use the internet. Phone books are obsolete. Why do they go through the expense of printing and distributing them?

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How do you help students to get the point you’re trying to teach? More often than not most of us try the direct approach: “Just tell them!” But a paradox in learning is that often students do not learn what they are told as well as when they discover it for themselves. The issue at heart here is that to by-pass the process of how one acquires learning is to inhibit learning. As I’ve said elsewhere, “Teaching-by-telling doesn’t work because it does other people’s thinking for them.”*

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One of the most underused, but potentially one of the most transforming, approaches to Christian education formation is the retreat. Often relegated to the area of youth ministry programs (but rarely formatted as a retreat even then) the retreat holds the potential of providing ways of learning and relationship building unavailable in any other type of church education programming. I find that for church leaders and members the first major obstacle to overcome when considering offering retreats is the fear of the unknown (or, “We’ve never done retreats in our church and I don’t think anyone will attend.”).

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Jenell Paris and Margot Eyring have prepared a most useful tool for those involved in missional efforts, whether leader or participant. Urban Disciples: A Beginner’s Guide to Serving God in the Inner City (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2000. 99 pages. $14.00. ISBN 0-8170-1367-9), is a workbook for persons or teams participating in, or planning on engaging in, urban mission experiences. The content is adaptable for various kinds of missions groups, including, as listed by the authors, “church Bible study groups, college ministry groups, small groups, cell groups, urban plunge programs, short-term mission projects, urban ministry courses at seminaries and colleges, and people in the first years of long-term ministry.”

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The title of Maria Harris’ work, Fashion Me a People: Curriculum in the Church (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989), engages the reader from the outset. Here is a work about the Church claiming its identity as the people of God to live out its pastoral vocation. Anyone who is passionate about being God’s people and the particular call “to end our isolation from others by living each day of our lives rooted …in the Christ,” will want to read, explore and most importantly engage this work. However, it is not a book for the pastor’s library or for the Christian educator’s resource shelf alone. It is a work that is written for reading together as the church community and is written to engage both clergy and laity. It is a book written to and for the church with sound theological reason and practical exercises, not only for group reflection but also for group participation.

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No, this isn’t about dancing—or what passes for dance in much of what I witness today. The “moves” I’m referring to is movement in your teaching. A great communicator once said that how you communicate is just as important as what you say. In terms of teaching that may mean that how you teach is as important as the content of your lesson. It’s easy to see how that can be true in Christian education. To teach about God’s love lovingly is more effective than presenting that same message (content) with an attitude of intolerance and impatience. In the Christian faith, “the medium is the message.”

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